


Home* for the Holidays

by strix_alba



Series: Works No Longer In Progress [3]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-25 21:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12044931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strix_alba/pseuds/strix_alba
Summary: The TARDIS takes the Doctor to spend Christmas with some other ancients in a not-quite-familiar setting





	Home* for the Holidays

**Author's Note:**

> I'm cleaning out my folders on my computer and found a whole bunch of rough drafts and abandoned WIPs. This was a rough draft from 2013 from a failed Kink Bingo prompt. I filled out some parts at the beginning and the end, but otherwise this is basically intact. It's nothing thrilling, just something I wanted archived.

The Doctor leaves the Pond’s house after Christmas dinner, and doesn’t know where to go next. He kind of doesn’t want to go, because this is their home and home is something lovely and permanent, which he no longer has, but Amy gives him some rather pointed hints that say he should probably not stay the night because they’re going to do all sorts of odd human things that he’s sure he doesn’t want to be a part of. Time Lords had their own peculiar Gallifreyan things they did together, of course. The circumstances are familiar enough to make his body sing with the desire for that sort of home-feeling; the mechanics and rituals are jarringly alien. They’re not quite meant for him.

So after the eggnog and presents and stories, he leaves, and he gets back in his TARDIS. He doesn’t intend to go anywhere in particular. He ought to be content to drift through the Time Vortex and think, and feel.

When he and the TARDIS take off, however, she hurtles through the vortex on a course to somewhere. The Doctor hangs on for dear life, and thinks, _fine, I could use a distraction, else I’ll become maudlin next._ He assumes that they’re going to end up on some planet that needs saving, and there will be a great deal of running and flying about and it’ll all be very exciting. He hasn’t done any running around and saving people in, oh, seven linear Earth hours or so. That’s got to be some kind of record (except for the time in the Pandorica; but he doesn’t think about that).

The TARDIS crashes to a halt with her usual finesse and great, glorious whooshing noise. The Doctor shuts his eyes to the screen that tries to tell him where he’s landed — it’s Christmas, or was Christmas, will be Christmas, is still in his present state, Christmas, and walking into the unknown is more fun anyway — and, armed with a banana daiquiri as a peace offering, he dashes out of the TARDIS.

He has approximately three-fourths of a second to take in a confusing impression of an endless night sky above him, golden daylight ahead, and a glittering rainbow beneath his feet, before he nearly trips and falls over backwards on the smooth, glassy surface on which the TARDIS has landed. Most of the daiquiri sloshes over the edges of the glass while he flails his arms to regain his balance with some difficulty. Possibly he allowed Rory to pour him one too many glasses of eggnog; bad Rory, very bad Rory, after two years he should know that Time Lords metabolize alcohol very differently from human beings, especially Time Lords who don’t normally drink alcohol but make rare exceptions for family.

‘You appear lost,’ says a deep, slow voice to his left.

The Doctor whirls, managing to keep his balance this time. Then he looks up, and up a couple more inches, at a tall man dressed entirely in heavy golden armor. His hands rest on the pommel of an enormous broadsword, and he regards the Doctor with an absolute calm that makes the Doctor feel, for the first time in centuries, young.

‘Yes — well, not exactly _lost_ , I meant to be here, at least, I _am_ meant to be here. Ah. I don’t suppose you know where here is, exactly?’ asks the Doctor, adjusting his bowtie.

The man in the golden armor inclines his head. ‘This is the Bifrost. All visitors to Asgard must go through here, if they are to be received in peace.’

The name is familiar. The Doctor takes a step closer — not too close, or else he’ll just be staring at the man’s breastplate, and that never intimidated anyone. ‘Oh! Asgard, home of the Æsir,’ he says.

The man nods.

The Doctor says that he likes the Æsir, because they kept the Jotunn in check while he was away from Earth for a while during the earlier days of humanity, and would Heimdall mind if he just looked around for a little bit?

Heimdall would not mind. He has heard of the Doctor. He knows what he has done.

The Doctor takes the slow path up the Bifrost to Asgard, leaving the TARDIS in Heimdall’s capable hands. It takes the better part of an hour to make it, but the Doctor doesn’t mind. The sky is dark around him, and at the end — literally, the gold at the end of the rainbow — stands a shining city that rises up in golden spires achingly familiar. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why he ended up here.

He observes the way that the architecture is similar to the capital of Gallifrey, even if the color pallet is different on the ground. It fills him with a wave of nostalgia, opening a huge hole in the space between his hearts. As his feet carry him down the Bifrost, his mind carries him down the paths that he followed in his childhood. He had a different body then, of course, and more than once in that time, he finds himself tripping over his feet because he has become so deeply engrossed in memory that he expects his legs to be shorter than they are.

As he nears the end, another figure appears before him: a young man with white skin — no, not human white, statue white, like marble — and golden hair. He smiles and bows to the Doctor.

‘Baldur!’ says the Doctor, shaken out of his reverie.

‘Heimdall told me of your arrival. He said that you might appreciate a guide,’ says Baldur. He holds out his arm, and the Doctor takes it, still looking around, and then they are standing in a doorway in the upper reaches of the palace. Before them is an endless spread of red flowers that carpet the ground like grass as it rolls down to join the next level of the palace; and growing in a flowerpot on a pedestal next to the door is a pot of daisies. The Doctor releases Baldur and sits down on the bench next to the daisies. Baldur leans against the wall on the opposite side of the archway, and waits. The Doctor sits and feels maudlin, and laughs at himself, and then it gets dark, and he asks Baldur to take him back down to the TARDIS.

When he gets there, Heimdall is waiting. Always, he is waiting. The Doctor thanks Baldur, who wishes him a Happy Christmas. Heimdall says something about the fact that he saw what happened to the Doctor’s home planet; he watched, and has been watching, and will always be watching. The Doctor thanks him, and asks if he’d like anything to drink, to mark the occasion. 

‘Alcohol cannot affect me,’ says Heimdall. ‘If that does not bother you, then by all means. Bring out your drink.’

The Doctor runs inside the TARDIS. He rummages through storage rooms and dusty bins and stasis chambers until he finds the set of silly, overwrought goblets and one of his few remaining flasks of Gallifreyan drinks for toasting. There are three goblets — three sides to a triangle, the base of all other polygons, mathematically perfect in the way that the Time Lords had always appreciated — so he calls out as Baldur turns to leave. ‘You don’t have to go,’ says the Doctor.

He sets the goblets down on the shining golden gates of the Bifrost and pours out measures for each of them. The liquid is made of berries that no longer grow on any living planet, fermented by tiny silicon-based microorganisms for exactly two Gallifreyan years and then stasis-locked until there is an achievement or a death or a birth to celebrate. The Doctor and Heimdall and Baldur drink together in silence on the Bifrost, watching Asgard’s star rise and cast its rich golden light on the palatial arches pouring up from the cliffs. The Doctor’s companions are strange — small in some ways, and much larger than he will ever be in others — but the ritual is the same: they drink, and remember, and they are together for the first time in millennia.

When the sun has finished rising, the Doctor leaves them. He waves off their attempts to give him back the goblets. ‘Put them in your vaults,’ he says. ‘I’ll be back to collect them some other time.’

‘Until then,’ says Heimdall, nodding deeply.

‘Make mischief wherever you go,’ says Baldur.

‘That I can promise.’ The Doctor smiles.

He takes one last, long look at the strangely echoing architecture of Asgard before he closes the door of the TARDIS. When the latch clicks, he lets out a deep breath that leaves him empty. All of the muddled emotions of the Ponds in their house, their physical home that they have together, seem to settle instead of swirling around inside him. 

He sets down the remaining goblet in the kitchen, and then returns to the control room, running his hands lovingly over the controls.

‘Thanks, old girl,’ he murmurs. ‘Let’s go find somewhere new, shall we?’


End file.
